What's in a name?

If Sonam Kapoor wants to adopt the Ahuja surname, it is nobody’s business but her own

Question: Why did Sonam Kapoor change her name to Sonam Kapoor Ahuja after she got married?

There is only one correct answer to that question: because she wanted to.

She wants to be known as Sonam Kapoor Ahuja from now on. And it is not our business to second-guess her or to offer helpful (I jest, of course) commentary on how her decision is a strike against gender equality and an obsequious nod to the patriarchy. Nor do we need fulminating think pieces on how this one decision to take her husband’s name and add it to her own somehow disqualifies Sonam from being a feminist – and is, in fact, a betrayal of the feminist causes she espoused all along.

For one thing, the name that we describe as Sonam’s own, the one she gave up in favour of her husband’s, is also the gift of another man: her father, Anil Kapoor. So, how would keeping it strike a blow against the patriarchy, when the name – quite literally – was bestowed upon her by the patriarch?

Can you see the logic in that convoluted piece of reasoning? No, me neither.

Whether you stick with the surname of your father or take your husband’s, it is still a man’s name you are sticking next to your own. So, why should one be a feminist choice and the other a kick in the rear of the feminist movement?

The short answer is that none of this matters – or more correctly, none of this should matter. If we all agree – and I hope we do – that feminism is about the freedom to make your own life decisions, to choose freely how you want to live your life, and yes, to make up your own mind how you wish to be styled, then every woman is entitled to make the choice that feels right for her. And even if you don’t agree with that choice, it is not for you or anyone else to shame her for it. That is not how a sisterhood works.

In fact, the last thing women need as they go about negotiating a tough world is to have the burden of prescriptive feminism placed on their already overburdened shoulders. We have quite enough on our plates without having a heavily annotated to-do and please-don’t list thrust down our throats as well.

And frankly, when you think about it, how is this prescriptive feminism any different from the demands that the patriarchy places upon us? Just as it was disempowering when women were forced to take on the names of their husband the moment they married, it is equally infantilizing to insist that they must stick with their birth names even if they don’t want to – on pain of having their feminist credentials cancelled by the Surname Police.

In that sense, there is no difference between the patriarchy and prescriptive feminism. Both of them want to dictate how we should live our lives, how we should behave, what we should and should not do, to fall within accepted parameters of approved behavior. So, why should we seek to cast off the bonds of one only to accept the constraints of the other?

If you ask me, we should refuse to acquiesce to the demands of both and live our lives just as we want to. And call ourselves whatever we damn well please. If we want to stick with our maiden names (as they are still rather quaintly called) then we should do so. If we want to be known by our married names, then we are free to do. In neither case, do we owe any explanations or justifications to anyone else.

There may be a dozen different reasons why women choose to stick with their father’s surname: they like the way it sounds; they already have a flourishing career in which they are known by that name; they don’t want to change their bylines or brand names; they don’t want the whole palaver of changing passports, Aadhar cards, bank accounts, Pan numbers and what have you.

And there are plenty of different reasons why women choose to adopt the surname of their husband. They may do it in the first initial flush of romantic love. Once they have children they may want the whole family unit to have the same name (this is also for practical reasons, as any woman who has gone through passport control with a young child who has a different surname than her own can tell you). Some of them may drop their own surnames altogether. Others may chose to hyphenate them with their husband’s.

It really depends on the woman in question and what she thinks works best for her. And that is exactly how it should be.

Which is why I refuse to join the Brigade of Outraged Feminists attacking Sonam Kapoor Ahuja with brickbats and pitchforks because she chose to change her name. She could style herself as Princess Consuela Bananahammock for all I care. It’s her life. It’s her decision. It’s her choice. It’s her name.

And it is nobody’s business but her own.

  

Wear your attitude

What women politicians tell us with their fashion choices

Fashion is often dismissed as frivolous. Not the kind of thing that a 'serious ' woman should concern herself with. Not for her the needless obsessing with hemlines and necklines; not for her a seasonal update of her wardrobe; not for her a closet full of high-heeled shoes.

No, the 'serious' woman is not supposed to pay much attention to her clothes. She should ideally have a utilitarian 'uniform', the kind she can step into every morning with the minimum of fuss and then go out and conquer the world.

But what of the women who have, in effect, conquered their world? How much attention do they pay to clothes? And what do their fashion choices tell us about them?

This is an interesting question to ask at this time when the world is teeming with women leaders, all of them with a distinctive style of their own. A style that has been honed over the years to project an image. This image may portray anything from power to humility, femininity to feminism, style to practicality. But every image sends forth a strong message about the women behind it.

Let's take a quick trip around this picture gallery to see what it tells us about  those featured?

Hillary Clinton

It makes sense to start with the woman who will soon (fingers crossed!) be the leader of the free world. At the Democratic convention, where Hillary accepted the party's nomination to run for President of the United States, she appeared in a dazzlingly-bright white suit, set off by blonde hair blow-dried to within an inch of its life. This was an image calculated to send out subliminal messages of power, control, perfection. This was a woman confident enough to find her style -- pant suits in a single block of color, set off with a discreet neckpiece -- and stick to it. Yes, it was a uniform, but it was entirely of her own making. A nod to fashion and yet a complete repudiation of it. Very Hillary, in other words.

Theresa May

Reams of newsprint have been dedicated to May's love of shoes, which takes in every style from thigh-high PVC boots to animal print kitten heels. And now that she is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, her shoes attract more attention than ever before, signaling -- as the media never tire of pointing out - the fun and frivolous side of this otherwise 'serious' person. But it is her tightly-structured and perfectly-tailored jackets that tell us about the essential woman: always poised, always in control, the grown up in any room. And just when you think you have figured her out, May throws you off balance yet again: with a statement necklace that hints at hidden depths behind that icy exterior.


Angela Merkel

Frau Merkel doesn't care what anyone thinks of her. And nothing says that more clearly and loudly than her wardrobe choices -- or more accurately, the lack of them. She is always dressed in an ill-fitting suit, which makes no concessions to the German Chancellor's figure. The message is clear: this woman has more important things to think about than the fit of her clothes. And that is, in itself, a style statement of sorts.

Sonia Gandhi

From the time she entered politics, Sonia has based her look on that of her famous mother-in-law. It probably helps that she inherited Indira Gandhi's amazing collection of saris, a veritable treasure trove of handlooms accessed from all parts of India. And Sonia wears them well, always well starched and pinned into place, loose enough around the pleats so that she can take the same long strides that were an Indira trademark, head covered by her pallu when she heads into rural parts. She is the Gandhi bahu, the repository of the family legacy, and there is never a moment when she doesn't look the part.

Mayawati

In her person, she embodies the dream of Dalit empowerment. So, it is no accident that Mayawati is the only female Indian politician who is seen in public carrying a designer handbag; or that she sports diamonds in her ears that look straight out of J. Jayalalitha's collection. Or even, that she wears smart salwar kameez ensembles of the kind that upper middle class urban women live in. Her image conveys a strong message to her followers: expensive tastes are no longer a preserve of the upper castes. Dalits have as much right to them as anyone else.

Mamata Banerjee

Her crumpled cotton saris and flip-flops have become her signature style ever since she descended on the streets of Calcutta to fight the Communists. And now that she is chief minister of the state, it serves to signal that Mamatadi is the same as ever: power has not gone to her head, or indeed infiltrated her wardrobe. She remains the same simple woman who lives in a one-bedroom apartment and devotes her life to her 'peepul'. A woman like that has no time for an ironing board, even if someone else is doing the ironing.

Priyanka Gandhi

She is the chameleon of Indian politics. And just as she keeps the country guessing about her political intentions, she also tends to mix it up as far as her sartorial choices are concerned. In the city, she dresses like any other 40-something mother of two (albeit one with a better figure than most) in jeans and T-shirts. When she heads for the family constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli, she drapes herself in a handloom sari, just like her mother and grandmother before her. In that, she is like Superman or Batman, changing into costume before charging into battle. I guess the Uttar Pradesh elections will show if she really is Wonder Woman!

Feminist? Who, me?

Whether you answer yes or no, there is no denying the debt every woman owes to those who went before

I am always baffled by young (and not so young) women who proclaim proudly that they have ‘no time for feminism’ or who declare when prodded that they wouldn’t really describe themselves as ‘feminist’. Women like this tend to say things like, “I am not really one for all that bra-burning nonsense’. Or even the risible, “I am not a feminist; I am a humanist.” And then there are those who misunderstand the concept completely and protest that they are not into all this ‘man-hating’ business.

This column is written for the benefit of women like these. Women who live in a world that grants them rights that the feminist movement fought for and won (and which they now take for granted). Women who need reminding what their lives would be like if generations of feminists before them hadn’t fought for their place in society.

So here, in no particular order of importance, are just some of the things that feminism brought us. Just so that these non-feminist ladies know that whether they acknowledge it or not, they owe a huge debt to ‘bra-burning, women-lib types’.

• The right to exercise control over your own body. Hard as this may be to believe, there was a time when women had no say in whom they were married off to. They had no control over their reproductive lives. And while this may still be true of millions of Indian women in rural households, middle-class educated women in our cities today have the right to marry according to their own choice; choose the contraception of their choice; and have an abortion if it fails. The law now recognizes the woman’s right to her own body. And we have feminism to thank for that.

• The right to property: While women had limited property rights the world over (control was effectively exercised by either her father or her husband) in India women who inherited property were effectively barred from disposing of it on their own. This ‘limited interest’ was abolished only in 1956 by the Hindu Succession Act, which made women the ‘absolute owner’ of any property they owned, and gave daughters an equal interest in the estate of their fathers. 

• The right to your name: No longer is it taken as given that a woman has to change her surname when she gets married (or even her first name, as happened with some traditional households). She gets to decide what name she is known as; a symbolic victory but an important one nonetheless when it comes to establishing her own identity. What’s more, thanks to a long legal battle waged by author and editor Githa Hariharan, women also have the right to be named as the ‘natural guardian’ of their children, a prerogative earlier restricted to men.

• The right to vote: We tend to take this right for granted in India, because women have had the vote ever since we gained independence in 1947. But this was only possible because of the suffragettes and suffragists movements – run entirely by feminists – that campaigned for years on end in Western democracies to get women the right to vote. 

• The right to work: Outside the home, that is. No longer do women have to be chained to the kitchen stove – unless that’s where they want to be. They have the freedom to go out into the world and earn their own living, using the skills they have developed in school and college (and there too, it is feminism that has made it possible for women to be educated at the same level as their male peers).

• The right to equal pay for equal work: You know all that brouhaha about Jill Abramson being fired as executive editor of the New York Times because she asked to be paid the same salary as her male predecessor? The story was quickly denied, but the controversy would have been a non-starter if it wasn’t for feminism. Not only would a woman never have been appointed to one of the top jobs in an organization but there would have been no question about paying her as much as a man would earn. You want to know what a pre-feminist workplace would look like? Just watch an episode of Mad Men. Do you really want to live in a world in which Joan Holloway reports to Roger Stirling and Peggy Olson to Don Draper? And all the while, combatting casual sexism – and the odd grope and grab – at the workplace? No, I didn’t think so.

So, all you ladies describing yourselves as non-feminists, unless you actually prefer being bare-foot and pregnant, slaving away all hours in the kitchen, with not a rupee (let alone a salary or a house) to call your own, and with no rights over your bodies or your children, maybe you’d do well to acknowledge the debt to those that went before and fought the good battle so that you didn’t need to.

In defence of men

In a free and frank gender debate, men must be allowed to air their views – no matter how offensive we find them

First off, a confession. I find myself increasingly discomfited by the newly-minted feminist narrative in which a woman is always considered to be right and the man is always seen as being wrong. In which a woman’s word is regarded as being more reliable than a man’s, simply because she is a woman. In which a man is assumed to be guilty until he is proved innocent, turning the principles of natural justice on their head, if a woman were to level a rape or dowry charge against him. And in which men and women are depicted as antagonistic entities, engaged in pitched battles across the gender divide.

It really doesn’t have to be like that. Women’s rights are not just a feminist issue. They are a humanist issue. And we do the feminist cause a disservice when we try and shut men out of the discourse, or treat them as enemies of the movement. This is the good fight which all right-thinking human beings must fight; not just those with an extra X chromosome.

Because of our visceral reaction to such events as the Delhi gang rape last December, the gang rape of a photo-journalist in Mumbai, and more recently, the allegations of sexual assault leveled against Tarun Tejpal, we are finally talking about a woman’s right to a safe environment, at home, at the office, and on the streets. But because our rage and anger is so overwhelming, the pitch of the debate has been raised to such shrill levels that we are in danger of drowning out good sense.

The first sign of this is our absolute refusal to listen to what men are trying to say, if it doesn’t fit in with our narrative of woman=victim and man=predator. While there is no disputing that women are more at risk when it comes to sexual violence or harassment, we cannot dismiss out of hand the notion that some men may be victims too. Cases of the dowry and rape laws being misused may be rare, but they do exist. And we ignore them at our peril.

But what is also worrying is the new fashion of shouting down men who express opinions that we regard as sexist. Take Farooq Abdullah, for instance, who confessed that he was now scared of talking to women for fear of what would happen (“I don’t even want to keep a woman secretary. God forbid, there is a complaint against me and I end up in jail”). Or Naresh Aggarwal, who said that men would no longer hire women as personal assistants for fear of being accused of sexual harassment.

Whatever we may think about the mind-set that generated such sentiments, there is no denying that these sentiments do exist. These two men were just brave/foolish/foolhardy (take your pick) to say in public which many men were feeling (and expressing) in private. But given the viciousness with which they were greeted, I wouldn’t be surprised if men now run scared of even speaking out on gender issues, for fear of being shouted down, sneered at, abused, or dismissed as chauvinistic Neanderthals.

And, if you ask me, that is a real shame.

If we want to change people’s minds on issues such as women’s empowerment, sexual harassment, or even sexual assault, then it is important to engage with them in a meaningful way which facilitates dialogue and a free and frank exchange of ideas. Men may well have views that we regard as sexist but just screaming ‘pigs’ at them will not make them rethink their attitudes. It will just make them disengage from the debate and keep their views to themselves in the future. And those views will never change.

  

It is simply self-defeating to create an environment in which no man can express his true opinions on gender – however sexist we may find them – without being torn to bits by a lynch mob motivated by political correctness. Jumping down the throats of people who say things we don’t like will not result in their views being asphyxiated out of existence. These attitudes will continue to flourish in the dark, all the more potent for being unspoken and hence unchallenged. 

Also, I can’t help but feel that it is time that we injected some shades of grey into a discourse that has become too black and white to allow for a nuanced approach. The feminist movement will only benefit from acknowledging that all women don’t fit into one easy category of ‘downtrodden victim’ who must be protected at all costs. Women are human beings, and as such they have the same strengths and weaknesses, the same virtues and flaws as men. Some women are truthful; some are not. Some women are weak; some are strong. Some women are victims; some are oppressors.

To lump them all into a one-size-fits-all category smacks of intellectual laziness and a complete misunderstanding of how the real world operates. This kind of thinking doesn’t empower women; it belittles them by reducing them to easy stereotypes. True equality exists in having the same standards applied to women as they would to men, without conceding any special privilege or concession simply because they are women.

And it also means conceding the point that men have a right to their own views on the gender debate currently raging in the country – never mind how strongly we disagree with him. Feminists cannot become the Thought Police, no matter how grave the provocation.

Kitchen Confidential

Why is the woman who cooks dismissed as downtrodden while the man who cooks is seen as emancipated?

Growing up, I never once saw my father enter the kitchen. He did not know how to cook; in fact, I doubt if he even knew how to make a cup of coffee for himself. The kitchen was always the exclusive preserve of my grandmother, my mother, and the other ladies of the household. The men never ventured inside; no, not even to fetch themselves a glass of water.

It may sound strange now, but this was pretty much the state of affairs in every home. Women did the ‘womanly’ things like cooking, cleaning, serving, fetching; yes, even the ones who held down jobs outside of the home. And men did ‘manly’ things like go out to work and bring back the daily bread (to be toasted and buttered and served up to them with a strong cup of tea). Men were very much the hunter-gatherers. And women remained nurturers and carers.

There were some men of our acquaintance who knew how to make a decent mutton biryani or a chingri malai curry, but their excursions into the kitchen were treated as momentous events that were marked down in the calendar months in advance. And even then, they were assisted by a flock of women who did all the dirty work – peeling, chopping, cleaning – for them. Once the mise en place was set, the men would sweep in to do the frying, sautéing, roasting or whatever else. And then, they would sweep out leaving the kitchen in an absolute shambles, to take their place at the dining table to be served like the kings they were.

I am glad to say that things have changed since then. Men no longer treat the kitchen as alien territory. Nearly all of them know enough cooking to be able to feed themselves in the absence of a mother or a wife. And many of them actually enjoy cooking, and take pride in their achievements behind the stove. But even so, based on purely empirical evidence, the bulk of the cooking in most households is still done by the women (either the lady of the house or the hired help).

What intrigues me, though, is how cooking has become another battleground of sexual politics. New-age feminism seems to think that a working woman who still cooks (or is expected to cook) at home is downtrodden, the victim of an age-old patriarchal system that decrees that the kitchen is a woman’s preserve. She is buying into sexual stereotypes and letting the sisterhood down with every perfect chapatti she rolls out.

On the other hand, a man who works outside the home and comes back to cook for his family is seen as an enlightened being. We even have a name for him. He is called the New Age Man. He is confident of his masculinity and not afraid of being in touch with his feminine side. He does not buy into any kind of sexual stereotyping. He is equally at ease in the boardroom as he is dexterous at the chopping board. We should all be so lucky as to end up with someone like him!

So basically, a woman who loves to cook for her family is a sell-out. But for a man, cooking for his family is a unique selling point. Can you figure this one out? No, me neither.

Why should the same impulse – to nurture and feed your loved ones – be seen through two such different prisms depending on the gender of the person concerned? Why should a woman be mocked for doing something that a man is congratulated for?

Clearly, as we enter into the second decade of the 21^st century, gender stereotyping has come full circle. But while men are admired for stepping out of their gender-defined roles, women are pilloried for staying within them.

I can still hear the jeers that greeted Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor when she admitted on national television that she enjoyed being a housewife and cooking dinner every night for her husband. How could she possibly say something like that, her critics tut-tutted. Didn’t she know that women were expected to be emancipated from housework now? Being a woman of substance meant having a career outside the home. Admitting to being a homebody, and worse, confessing to cooking for your husband (and actually enjoying it!), was a complete no-no.

And yet, I am sure if the tables had been turned, the public reaction would have been quite different. If Shashi Tharoor had said in an interview that he loved going back home after a hard day at the office and rustling up a nice meal for his wife, he would have been hailed as the epitome of the New Man, an ideal that every male should aspire to.

What is going on here? Why is Sunanda’s goshtaba or tabak maas bad while Shashi’s meen moily or avial is good? Why this double standard when it comes to appraising a primal desire: the impulse to cook for those we love?

The truth is that all of us are good at some things and rubbish at others. Some women enjoy the prospect of cooking for their families while others wouldn’t be caught dead before a stove. Similarly, some men love the idea of cooking while others steer well clear of the kitchen.

So, here’s a novel idea. Why not allow each one of them to do as they please – and what pleases them – without any value judgement? That’s not asking for much, is it?

The Dress Code

It really doesn’t matter what you wear; you can be a feminist in both a sari and a skirt

Women and clothes. It really doesn’t get more complicated than that. There’s conflicting advice coming from every corner. Everyone has an opinion on what you should or should not wear (and where you should or should not wear it). There are people who seem to believe that your choice of outfit has a direct connection with your personal safety. But no matter how much care you take to dress every morning – or evening – you can rest assured that there will always be someone out there who believes that in those clothes, you are simply asking for it.

As for me, all through my life, I have tended to take the path of least resistance when it came to clothes. Growing up in Calcutta, where I went to a school and college run by nuns, there was a certain assumption that ‘good girls’ always dressed conservatively. And quite frankly, I never had a problem with that. I wore salwar kameezes and churidar kurtas routinely and felt incredibly grown-up whenever I wore a sari on special occasions.

Looking back, I often wonder why more of us Loreto girls didn’t rebel against the unspoken dress code that even outlawed something as tame as pedal-pushers (if you have no idea what these are, consider yourself lucky). My guess is that it was mostly because we never really paid that much attention to what we wore. We didn’t see clothes as a means to making some sort of political statement. And I most certainly didn’t think that they defined who I was in any manner.

Clothes definitely did not make this woman, I would have said if I had given any thought to the matter. But quite honestly, I never did. I had more important things to think about (like when I would finally get through the interminable James Joyce opus; and why I could never keep all the characters in War and Peace straight in my head).

After college, I began working at the ABP group, which – in those days at least – was a bastion of orthodoxy. All the women wore saris to work (only one lady with a particularly racy reputation would wear tight kurtas with trousers, which was regarded as the height of daring) and I duly took my cue from them before relaxing into the odd salwar-kameez and finally graduating to that old journo standby, blue jeans.

However I may have dressed on my time off, at work I always veered towards the line of sartorial safety. I would no more have worn jeans and a T-shirt to cover an election rally in a rural area than I would have worn a bikini to an official banquet at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The idea was always to blend in, to seem non-threatening. If I was going to be the proverbial fly on the wall, then I had to be a cipher, nondescript enough to disappear into the background. I couldn’t be that girl in a Bermuda shorts, who thought she was striking a blow against patriarchy by showing off her legs.

But then, these are choices that most women of my generation made, because we wanted to be taken seriously – and we had bigger battles to fight. So, we wanted attention to be focussed on our brains rather than our bodies. And we wanted the conversation to be about our talent and professional abilities rather than our clothes.

I guess we’ve come a long way from that (er, baby, as the sexist Sixties line would have it). And in a way it is comforting that we now take enough of our freedoms for granted to finally be able to have that conversation about clothes. At some level, I suppose it must be seen as a sign of progress that women are all charged up to fight for their right to wear a mini-skirt and not be leered at.

But speaking for myself, I still find the idea of a Slut Walk risible in the Indian context, when women in rural areas who are wrapped up in six yards of fabric get sexually molested, assaulted and raped every day. And call me sexist if you will, but I find it hard to sympathise when women complain of being leered at after putting their breasts out on display in their latest push-up bras. Hell, there are times when even I gawp in horrified fascination at those acres of cleavage on display, so I’m not one to point fingers.

When it comes to clothes, though, I think the common-sense argument is the most compelling one. Of course, you can wear what you like. Of course, you can go where you like while you’re wearing it. And of course, nobody has the right to molest or rape you because of the way you’re dressed. But there is such a thing as ‘appropriate dressing’, and we would be fools to deny it just to sound politically correct. For instance, I still wouldn’t wear a short skirt to a political press conference. And I certainly wouldn’t wear a skimpy top while reporting from a rural area.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that clothes are really not that important. Because what you wear is not who you are. So, let’s not make the mistake of believing that our identity is wrapped up in our clothes. It is possible to be a feminist in a sari as well as a skirt – and we should never forget that.